Empire director, Lee Daniels, desperately wanted to contract HIV/AIDS

The Empire director, Lee Daniels, opened up about his tragic mission to contract HIV/AIDS in a desperate bid to end his life.

He spoke at a lecture and explained that he deliberately had unsafe sex to try and get the virus after feeling undeserving of life.

According to the reports by TheJasmineBrand, the 57-year-old couldn't fathom why people around him were dying, including his friends, but he survived.

He said: 'It [AIDS] wiped away all of my friends. I had no friends.

'It was terrifying, because we never knew whether you could drink from glasses or what it was. It was the most terrifying thing ever, and I didn't understand why it was that I wasn't [dead], because there were far better souls than me that were going [dying].'

Describing the extreme measures he went to in his lowest state, he continued: 'I thought that I needed to go. And so I descended into drugs and into sexual bathhouses to die.'

The director then credited the fact that he's still alive and HIV/AIDS free 'a miracle from God.'

He added: 'I really don't understand it, because I should have had HIV. Everybody else did.'

Lee is a television producer and director renowned for his work on 2009's Precious, which received six Academy Award nominations.